Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science, Vol 16, No 1 (2014)

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An Amortized Search Tree Analysis for Finding a k-Leaf Spanning Tree in an Undirected Graph

Daniel Binkele-Raible, Henning Fernau

Abstract


The problem of finding a spanning tree in an undirected graph with a maximum number of leaves is known to be NP-hard. We present an algorithm which finds a spanning tree with at least k leaves in time O*(3.4575k) which improves the currently best algorithm. The estimation of the running time is done by using a non-standard measure. The present paper is one of the still few examples that employ the Measure & Conquer paradigm of algorithm analysis in the area of Parameterized Algorithmics.

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